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With the end of Beta Phase One approaching rapidly the GD Studio, under the lead of James "2GD" Harding, decided to put out one last invitational to determine who can crown themselves champions of Europe just before the break.

16 Teams will battle it out for a total prize money of 600$ in a double elimination bracket. This tournament also marks the first official showing of the highly rated Gamers2 outfit, as well as the new lineup of Flipsid3 Tactics, who are now featuring the possibly best DPS player on the European server, George "ShadowBurn" Gushcha.

To give you a small idea about what teams to watch out for, we asked several members from the competitive scene for their predictions:

Jonathan "re1nforce" Larsson , member of the GD Studio:

I have to say Melty will most likely take home the $600 tonight, but there are a lot of contenders for second and third place! I've been fairly impressed by K1ck in scrims, so I can see them upsetting Fnatic in the loser bracket finals and ending 2nd place, followed by Fnatic 3rd and the Hulktastic mix 4th!

Kiryl “Shyyou” Nikalayenka, player for Flips1de Tactics

So here we go: Having the most time together Melty and Fnatic both gonna step up to the finals most likely. And if I would have to make a choice here between them both, I would place a bet on Melty. As for the 3rd place, lets just guess it will be G2.

The first round of games will be starting at 18:30 CET. You can follow the action at the following twitch channels:

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The latest holiday event is here and will last through January 1st! Coming with it is the new brawl where players face off against a boss played by another player, Mei's Snowball Offensive from last year's Winter Wonderland returns as well and we get 50 new skins and other cosmetics, as well as last years' ones! There's also improvement for reporting players, and the usual bug fixes, so check out he full patch notes at the bottom.
Winter Wonderland
Yeti Hunter
This 6-player brawl sets 5 Meis against one Yeti player who utilizes Winston’s abilities. The Yeti must gather meat to unlock a powerful rage ability adding immunity to freeze and more powerful bonuses. The Meis try to find and eliminate their woolly opponent before he’s consumed enough meat. The Mei players have a new tool in their arsenal, though—a modified “Yeti trap” ultimate ability. Which team will emerge from the snow?
WINTER WONDERLAND RETURNS
It's the most wonderful time of the year!
Overwatch is getting into the holiday spirit again for the next three weeks! Expand your collection of seasonal-themed items, and enjoy two winter brawls.
This year, we’re celebrating with a new brawl: Yeti Hunter, as well as bringing back Mei’s Snowball Offensive. We’ve decked the halls of Black Forest, King’s Row, and Hanamura. But we know what you really want: presents! Unlock over 50 new seasonal items—including legendary skins like Snow Owl Ana, Rime Sombra, Beachrat Junkrat, and Ice Fisherman Roadhog—alongside winter gear from last year at reduced credit costs.
Mei’s Snowball Offensive
In this brawl, Mei's Endothermic Blaster has been modified to fire a single, super-powered snowball. Taking down an enemy only requires one hit, but a miss can be costly. Once your weapon is empty search for the nearest snow pile to reload. When the battle starts to heat up, you can activate Mei's Ultimate, which turns her blaster into an automatic snowball launcher, allowing you to fire continuously as your enemies scatter. This year, you play on the Black Forest map as well as Ecopoint: Antarctica.
New Skins:

There's also this handy rundown of Hero related changes, courtesy of redditor itsjieyang:
Patch Notes December 12 (source)
PATCH HIGHLIGHTS
New Seasonal Event: Winter Wonderland 2017
‘Tis the merriest time of year—Winter Wonderland is here!
From now until January 1, experience the holiday spirit with a brand-new brawl, Mei’s Yeti Hunt, and relive the previous Winter Wonderland’s magical moments by playing Mei’s Snowball Offensive. Players will also be able to unwrap loot boxes to collect last year’s festive fare in addition to 50 new holiday-themed cosmetics, including legendary skins like Snow Owl Ana, Avalanche Bastion, Beachrat Junkrat, Ice Fisherman Roadhog, Rime Sombra, and more.
To learn more about Winter Wonderland, click here.
Player Warning Updates
Several changes have been made to the player report system.
Players being reported will receive an in-game message letting them know that they have been reported, along with a warning concerning continued negative behavior. Ongoing misconduct will result in silence, suspension, or a permanent ban, depending on the severity of the infraction (in severe cases, players may receive their punishment before receiving the initial in-game message).
Players who report someone for poor behavior, resulting in a disciplinary action, will now be notified with an in-game message when the issue has been resolved. We take every report seriously, along with your feedback. Thank you for your patience as we continue to fine tune these systems.
GAME BROWSWER AND CUSTOM GAMES
General
Added an option that allows heroes to spawn with fully charged ultimate abilities. This can be enabled under Settings > Heroes > General > Spawn with Ultimate Ready when creating a custom game
Added an option that allows heroes to cast ultimate abilities that last for the full duration of a match. This can be enabled under Settings > Heroes > General > Infinite Ultimate Duration when creating a custom game
The length of time that hero ultimates remain active can now be adjusted. This slider can be found under Settings > Heroes > General > Ultimate Durations
A.I.
[PC] An option to “Remove All A.I.” in the custom game lobby can be accessed by Right Click > Remove All Bots
[PS4] A.I. players can be removed from within the custom game lobby by selecting a bot, then selecting “Remove All Bots” from the submenu
[XB1] A.I. players can be removed from within the custom game lobby by selecting a bot, then selecting “Remove All Bots” from the submenu
HERO GALLERY
General
Players can now clear new item notifications with the “Mark All As Seen” button in the Hero Gallery
BUG FIXES
General
Fixed an issue that caused the arcade card for Limited Duel and Mystery Duel to not list all currently disabled characters
[PC] Fixed an issue that prevented certain sound effects from playing when navigating the Options menu with a controller
Fixed a bug in Elimination mode that caused players to spawn as a random hero at the start of a match instead of the one that was highlighted
A.I.
Fixed a bug that caused Roadhog Bot to get stuck in the spawn room of the Oasis: City Center stage
Heroes
Fixed a visual bug that caused Ana’s Biotic Rifle ammo clip to detach when her Captain Amari skin was equipped
Fixed a bug that prevented Doomfist’s Rocket Punch from destroying objects
Fixed a bug that caused Doomfist’s Rocket Punch to not always deal damage when an enemy hits a wall
Fixed a bug that caused Doomfist’s Rocket Punch to not always stop an enemies' movement when they impact a wall
Fixed an issue that canceled Doomfist’s Seismic Slam when it was unable to reach the targeted location
Fixed an issue that caused Doomfist’s Seismic Slam to trigger instantly when the ability was used to travel up inclines
Fixed a bug that caused Doomfist’s Seismic Slam to create performance drops when repeatedly used with no cooldown
Fixed an issue that caused D.Va’s Micro Missiles to not destroy breakable objects
Added green detail textures on Sparrow Genji's sword scabbard when the golden weapon variant is equipped
Fixed a bug that prevented Hanzo’s Storm Bow reload from canceling if he used a melee attack after using his wall climbing ability
Fixed a bug that prevented Mei’s Cryo-freeze from clearing the healing debuff caused by Ana’s Biotic Grenade
Fixed a bug that caused Mercy’s Caduceus Blaster reload to be canceled if the player pressed the Resurrect keybind without a target to Resurrect
Fixed a bug that showed Mercy’s Guardian Angel targeting UI on allies while it was already in progress on a selected target
Fixed a bug that allowed a Mercy player to cast Resurrect on a player that was in the process of being resurrected by another Mercy
Fixed a bug that allowed Moira’s Biotic Orb to pass through terrain and structures
Fixed an issue that prevented players from using Moira’s Biotic Orb’s regeneration option when primary fire was disabled
Fixed a visual bug with Moira’s Biotic Orb that sometimes caused Biotic Grasp’s healing spray effects to display instead
Fixed a bug that prevented Moira’s Coalescence from healing an allied Reaper in Wraith Form
Fixed a bug that prevented Moira from being able to pass through enemies when using Fade
Fixed a bug that caused Moira’s eyelashes to detach from her face during her Heroic highlight intro
Fixed an issue that prevented Moira’s self-healing statistic from being collected and displayed in the game stats
Fixed a visual issue with Moira’s Oasis skin that caused her knees to clip through her knee guards while crouched
Fixed a bug that caused Reaper’s shotguns to animate incorrectly when discarded on the ground
Fixed a bug that sometimes allowed Reinhardt’s Charge to escape abilities that should prevent movement (e.g. Zarya’s Graviton Surge)
Fixed a bug that prevented Widowmaker’s Grappling hook from pulling players to moveable objects, even when they were stationary (e.g. the window on the Eichenwalde Castle doors)
Fixed an issue that prevented highlights captured by Zenyatta players from recording correctly when the Cultist skin was equipped
Maps
Fixed an issue that allowed some heroes to hide on the Junkertown payload when using sit emotes
Fixed a bug that caused a performance drop when players shot at the gold coin piles in the last Defender spawn of Junkertown
Previous live patch notes.

In order to improve matchmaking, Blizzard is planning a couple of changes for Season 8. The first change is limiting the maximum Skill Rating (SR) difference between the highest SR player on a team and the lowest SR player on the same team. The second change is the removal of performance-based matchmaking for Diamond tier players and above.
Don't forget that performance-based matchmaking is coming to Heroes of the Storm next week!
Blizzard (Source)
Limiting the Skill Rating variance for Teams

With the debut of the new competitive season 8 in January we’re going to be making a few matchmaking changes to increase match quality. The first change is limiting the maximum Skill Rating (SR) difference between the highest SR player on a team and the lowest SR player on the same team. This will especially help players at both the lower and higher limits of SR, where there are typically fewer players available. If a player has an SR of 4500, there are not that many other players who have a similarly high SR. The matchmaker has previously assigned players who are of a much lower SR to the same team as 4500 SR player, and hasn’t always created the best match experience possible.

We implemented the technology for this change in the 1.17.0.3 patch at the end of November, but did not aggressively tune the SR value of the limit. During the month of December we will be quietly testing the effect of more restrictive SR limits to both match quality and queue times. With the data and player feedback from testing, we’ll then come back from our holiday break on January 2 and apply a finalized set of values for Season 8.

Note that the matchmaker will still allow you to group with other players according to the current SR limits at their skill tier, which is 1000 SR for Bronze through Diamond, 500 SR for Master, and 250 for Grandmaster. We recently restricted the SR grouping limit at Grandmaster with this new Season 8 change in mind.

Removing Personal Performance Skill Rating Adjustments for Diamond tier players and above
Ok, this explanation is going to be pretty lengthy, so everyone grab some popcorn and buckle up.

When you win a competitive match of Overwatch, you gain Skill Rating, and when you lose a match you also lose Skill Rating. The amount that you gain or lose is calculated based on many different factors, and here’s a quick list of some of the most important ones:

• If you have a higher than 50% chance to win a match, you gain less for a win and lose more for a defeat. Conversely, if you were an underdog in a match than you gain more SR when you win and lose less SR when defeated.
• New players experience both higher gains and higher losses than players who have completed a lot of matches.
• You gain less SR for a win than you lose for a defeat as you more closely approach the system’s mathematical upper limit 5000 SR. (So at very high SRs you do need a greater than 50% win rate to keep your SR stable.)

There is also another factor in determining the SR change after completing a match, and that’s a measurement of how well you personally performed during the match. If you perform well than you gain more SR when you win, and lose less SR when defeated. The reverse is also true, so if you perform very poorly you gain less SR for a win and lose additional SR when defeated. The personal performance adjustments have been controversial amongst the community for quite some time, especially since the calculations for these adjustments are not at all transparent.

The adjustment does create a lot of positive system wide effects including rewarding players who make the effort to play well, punishing inactive players, and more quickly providing fairer matches for new players or those who decide to play a new hero or role. So we spent quite a lot of time examining data over multiple seasons, checking a lot of math, reading a LOT of community feedback, and then doing some deep soul searching about this. Especially at the higher levels of online competition where every point of SR matters, we want players to not be distracted and worry about how to optimize around the personal performance adjustment. They should just be trying to WIN. So after we get back from the holidays on January 2nd we’re going to turn off the personal performance SR adjustments for players in the Diamond skill tier and above.

We look forward to everyone playing matches and giving us feedback about these changes in Season 8!

New Mei themed event - Yeti hunt boss battle where a player plays the boss, old Snowball fight returns, new skins, seasonal tweaks to maps and much more!
"Jeff from the Overwatch team"™ is back to his video ways and is here to tell us about the next seasonal event! December 12th aka next Tuesday will bring new skins, including an existing Hanzo one from the comics and we'll be getting seasonal changes to some of the maps - so snow everywhere, presumably. Mei's Snowball Offensive is back on an additional map, and there's a new event as well, Mei's Yeti Hunt, a boss fight with 5 Meis vs 1 Yeti aka Winston. The boss will be played by an actual player as well!

There's a new PTR build and it's bringing a looot of bug fixes, primarily of the Hero related variety, specifically a lot of Doomfist, Mercy and Hanzo bugs.
PTR December 5 (source)
(PTR patch notes last updated: Tuesday, December 5 @ 4:15pm PT)
HERO UPDATES
Genji
Added green detail textures on Sparrow Genji's sword scabbard when the golden weapon variant is equipped
BUG FIXES
General
Fixed a bug in Elimination mode that caused players to spawn as a random hero at the start of a match instead of the one that was highlighted
A.I.
Fixed a bug that caused Roadhog Bot to get stuck in the spawn room of the Oasis: City Center stage
Heroes
Fixed a bug that sometimes caused Doomfist to fall through the ground when using Seismic Slam on an inclined surface
Fixed a bug that prevented Doomfist’s Rocket Punch from destroying breakable objects
Fixed a bug that caused Doomfist’s Rocket Punch to not always deal damage when an enemy hits a wall
Fixed a bug that caused Doomfist’s Rocket Punch to not always stop an enemies' movement when they impact a wall
Fixed a bug that prevented Doomfist’s Rocket Punch from correctly pinning targets to walls
Fixed an issue that canceled Doomfist’s Seismic Slam when it was unable to reach the targeted location
Fixed an issue that caused Doomfist’s Seismic Slam to trigger instantly when the ability was used to travel up inclines
Fixed an issue that prevented D.Va’s Micro Missiles from destroying breakable objects
Fixed a bug that allowed Genji to deflect projectiles through walls
Fixed a bug that prevented Hanzo’s Storm Bow reload from canceling if he used a melee attack after using his wall climbing ability
Fixed a bug that allowed Mercy to cast Resurrect on a player that was in the process of being resurrected by another Mercy
Fixed a bug that prevented Mercy’s Caduceus Blaster from reloading if the Resurrect was activated without a target
Fixed a bug that showed Mercy's Guardian Angel targeting UI on allies while it was already in progress on a selected target
Fixed a bug that prevented Hanzo’s Storm Bow reload from canceling if he used a melee attack after using his wall climbing ability
Fixed a bug that allowed Moira’s Biotic Orb to pass through terrain and structures
Fixed an issue that prevented Moira’s self-healing statistic from being collected and displayed in the game stats
Fixed an issue that prevented players from using Moira’s Biotic Orb’s regeneration option when primary fire was disabled
Fixed a bug that prevented Moira’s Biotic Orb from depleting over time after being deflected by Genji
Fixed an issue that prevented the beam on Moira’s Biotic Grasp from tracking targets correctly
Fixed a bug that prevented Moira’s Coalescence from healing an allied Reaper in Wraith Form
Fixed a bug that prevented Moira’s Biotic Grasp heal over time from refreshing properly on allies
Fixed a bug that prevented Moira’s Biotic Grasp from destroying breakable objects
Fixed a bug that sometimes allowed Reinhardt’s Charge to escape abilities that should prevent movement (e.g. Zarya’s Graviton Surge)
Fixed a bug that prevented Sombra's Hack from interrupting Tracer's Pulse Bomb if it was being thrown
Fixed a bug that prevented Widowmaker’s Grappling Hook from pulling players to moveable objects, even when they were stationary (e.g. the window on the Eichenwalde Castle doors)
Maps
Fixed an issue that allowed some heroes to hide on the Junkertown payload when using sit emotes
Previous PTR patch notes.

The Overwatch League will be starting on January 10 and lasting through June, but the big news for us regular players is that we'll be getting some new skins out of it! Each team in the league has their own skins for each Hero and those will be available to all players, using a new currency - Overwatch League tokens. Every player that logs in within a month of the league's launch will be getting one skin for free, but there are still no details on how exactly we'll be getting these tokens, whether we'll be able to get them with in-game activities or only buying them with real money. What is known is that the money from the skin sales will help the teams themselves and the league, and you can check out more info from League commissioner Nate Nanzer in the video below:
There's going to be a LOT of skins coming, with 12 teams and 26 Heroes each, and redditor fireyREIGN compiled some of them to give you an idea of the team looks: